Counting hard 29th July

John is on holiday for today's class, but we have Andrew instead. He gives me a challenge to try to make my front crawl more efficient - each length try to reduce the number of strokes, by stretching the arm forward further and back on each stroke. It's quite a challenge - and that's just the mental maths! It's natural to count strokes per breath, so group the strokes into 3's or 4's or 5's etc, but then I lose count of how many breaths, and have to remember to count the occasional even numbers at the start and end of each length. I get the hang of it, and by the end of my 20-plus lengths ( I lose count of those I'm so busy counting strokes) I have reduced by number of strokes from 34 to 24 per length - my personal best - but seemed to get the average down significantly.

500m

July 28th Under the bridge at Shillingford

Claire (George's 'birth twin' - born on same day) and her family come down from London to meet us in Shillingford, to go for a river trip and a swim. The Shillingford Bridge Hotel has an outdoor pool set on grassy bank next to the river Thames, accessed by a path underneath the bridge. It's a gorgeous place to enjoy a Pimm's in the sunshine, a swim with a beautiful view, followed by a trip in a little boat we hire from the hotel for an hour. We take tea on board, and let the teenagers steer us under the bridge and back up river towards Benson. Perfect.

250m

Not swimming but paddling Sat 27th July

Hot, hot weather. The grandchildren are staying and we decide it is too hot to drive far, so we walk up to Cutteslowe where they have great fun feeding the ducks, the older one is very adventurous in the play area, and then in the paddling pool. She soon learns the local game - follow a line of mostly bigger kids climbing on to and jumping off the little ship in the middle.

On but not in The River Cherwell 21st July

My friend Peter makes coracles and on this Sunday morning he has invited me to join him on the water to try one out

In the afternoon I go punting further down river through the University Parks, with my nephew and his fiancee.

Guerilla Singing, and Mindfulness 13th July

Organised by friends who live on Otmoor, a group of us meet in Charlbury at the railway station - most of us have travelled by train - and walk to the local church for our first sing of the day. We walk about 8 miles through the countryside, popping up to sing in the village churches in Spelsbury, Shorthampstead, and Chadlington, ending up in the pub in Charlbury for supper in the pub before getting the train home. Along the way I have a chat about swimming with another singer. She has been swimming regularly since childhood - used to compete - and says for her it is essential regular exercise, when she can take time to think through things in her head. She describes how she can swim very efficiently length after length, the way most of us can walk for miles - on auto-pilot. It strikes me again how I am still at a stage where I have to stay focused on the process to swim 'properly'. This means I can't be on auto-pilot, lost in thought (at best) or troubled by an over busy mind: the mindful process of each stroke and each breath takes me out of myself (?) - my mind - into my body, breathing, the water.

First visit to Hinksey this year! July 17th

It's mid July already and this is my first visit of the season to Hinksey outdoor pool. It's a measure of the poor weather we've had so far this summer. It's gorgeous now, hot and sunny. I cycle down the Abingdon road after work and enjoy a lovely dip in the water. I swim about 250m

My birthday treat: Cycling down river

I cycle down the canal, joining the river near Binsey, just north of Osney Island, where I continue down the river to Folly Bridge. I am on my way to visit my new friend, Gina, the jeweller I met singing on May 1st. We have coffee in her studio looking over the water, while she shows me some of her wonderful collection of beautiful sea glass. I choose some gorgeous greeny turquoise bits of glass, polished soft and smooth by the sea. She is going to set them for me as earings and a ring. Bits of the sea to carry with me wherever I go.

To complete my birthday treat I cycle back up to Ferry pool in time to catch the end of the Swim Fit class, and do 10 lengths: 250m